Body Language and Eye Contact The use of positive body language enhances your oral presentation. Stand erect and avoid sitting, and make use of hand gestures and facial expressions to emphasize a point. Speak with conviction and attempt to make eye contact with the entire audience by sweeping your gaze across the room. Avoid fixating on a single person or object.
Avoid Reading Avoid reading from a text, as this prevents you from making eye contact and causes your audience to lose attention. You don't have to memorize your presentation, but you should know the material well enough that you can give the presentation by using only note cards or visual aids to jog your memory.
Organization Organize your oral presentation so that it flows logically from one point to the next. Your presentation should have an introduction which gives an overview and states your main point. The body of the presentation should consists of material that support your main point. The conclusion should summarize the contents of your presentation while reemphasizing your main point.
Appropriate Pauses Use pauses after making an important point. This allows time for the information to sink in with the audience. Pauses can also help with the pace of your presentation and give you the opportunity for a quick breather or to take a sip of water.
Visual Aids Use visual aids to enhance your presentation, but be careful not to let them overwhelm it. Too many visual aids can distract the audience which can cause you to be tuned out. You should also keep handouts to minimum to keep your audience from shuffling through papers or reading while you are speaking.
Take Questions Take questions from your audience at the end of the presentation if time permits. This gives you the opportunity to clarify any points for the audience and allow for more personal contact.
Your audience can be your friend
To help you gain more confidence when speaking in public, think of ways to engage your audience. When you make an important point pay attention to the people who are nodding in agreement and the ones who are frowning in disagreement. As long as you are creating a reaction in your audience you are in charge.
Keep them awake
The one thing you don't want is for them to fall asleep! But make no mistake public speaking arenas are designed to do just that: dim lights, cushy chairs, not having to open their mouths - a perfect invitation to catch up on those zzzzs. Ways to keep them awake include
Ask rhetorical questions
Maintain eye contact for a second or two with as many people as possible
Be challenging
Change the pace of your delivery
Change the volume of your voice
Hints and Tips for Effective Public Speaking
Mistakes
Mistakes are all right.
Recovering from mistakes makes you appear more human.
Good recovery puts your audience at ease - they identify with you more.
Tell stories
Stories make you a real person not just a deliverer of information.
Use personal experiences to bring your material to life.
No matter how dry your material is, you can always find a way to humanise it.
How to use the public speaking environment
Try not to get stuck in one place.
Use all the space that's available to you.
Move around. One way to do this is to leave your notes in one place and move to another.
Technology
Speak to your audience not your slides.Your slides are there to support you not the other way around.
Ideally, slides should be graphics and not words (people read faster than they hear and will be impatient for you to get to the next point).
If all the technology on offer fails, it's still you they've come to hear.
Body Language and Eye Contact
The use of positive body language enhances your oral presentation. Stand erect and avoid sitting, and make use of hand gestures and facial expressions to emphasize a point. Speak with conviction and attempt to make eye contact with the entire audience by sweeping your gaze across the room. Avoid fixating on a single person or object.
Avoid Reading
Avoid reading from a text, as this prevents you from making eye contact and causes your audience to lose attention. You don't have to memorize your presentation, but you should know the material well enough that you can give the presentation by using only note cards or visual aids to jog your memory.
Organization
Organize your oral presentation so that it flows logically from one point to the next. Your presentation should have an introduction which gives an overview and states your main point. The body of the presentation should consists of material that support your main point. The conclusion should summarize the contents of your presentation while reemphasizing your main point.
Appropriate Pauses
Use pauses after making an important point. This allows time for the information to sink in with the audience. Pauses can also help with the pace of your presentation and give you the opportunity for a quick breather or to take a sip of water.
Visual Aids
Use visual aids to enhance your presentation, but be careful not to let them overwhelm it. Too many visual aids can distract the audience which can cause you to be tuned out. You should also keep handouts to minimum to keep your audience from shuffling through papers or reading while you are speaking.
Take Questions
Take questions from your audience at the end of the presentation if time permits. This gives you the opportunity to clarify any points for the audience and allow for more personal contact.
Source: http://www.ehow.com/list_5978577_oral-presentation-skills.html
How to Build Confidence for Public Speaking
Your audience can be your friendTo help you gain more confidence when speaking in public, think of ways to engage your audience. When you make an important point pay attention to the people who are nodding in agreement and the ones who are frowning in disagreement. As long as you are creating a reaction in your audience you are in charge.
Keep them awake
The one thing you don't want is for them to fall asleep! But make no mistake public speaking arenas are designed to do just that: dim lights, cushy chairs, not having to open their mouths - a perfect invitation to catch up on those zzzzs. Ways to keep them awake include
Hints and Tips for Effective Public Speaking
Mistakes
- Mistakes are all right.
- Recovering from mistakes makes you appear more human.
- Good recovery puts your audience at ease - they identify with you more.
Tell stories
How to use the public speaking environment
Technology
Source: http://www.impactfactory.com/gate/public_speaking_training_course/freegate_1552-1104-88327.html
Video demonstration of a good presentation